" 'Maybe I was too harsh,' says the Angel Gabriel, 'but being saints, when we say a thing we must stick to it. Howsumever, I'll let him settle in any part of the world he likes, and I'll send there the kind of human beans he'd wish most for. Now, give your ordher,' he says to me, taking out his book and pencil, 'and I'll make for you the kind of people you'd like to live among.'
" 'Well,' says I, 'I'd like the men honest and brave, and the women good.'
" 'Very well,' he says, writing it down; 'I've got that—go on.'
" 'And I'd like them full of jollity and sport, fond of racing and singing and hunting and fighting, and all such innocent divarsions.'
" 'You'll have no complaint about that,' says he.
" 'And,' says I, 'I'd like them poor and parsecuted, bekase when a man gets rich there's no more fun in him.'
" 'Yes, I'll fix that. Thrue for you,' says the Angel Gabriel, writing.
" 'And I don't want them to be Christians,' says I; 'make them Haythens or Pagans, for Christians are too much worried about the Day of Judgment.'
" 'Stop there! Say no more!' says the saint. 'If I make as fine a race of people as that I won't send them to hell to plaze you, Brian Connors.'
" 'At laste,' says I, 'make them Jews.'
" 'If I made them Jews,' he says, slowly screwing up one eye to think, 'how could you keep them poor? No, no!' he said, shutting up the book, 'go your ways; you have enough.'
"I clapped me hands, and all the Little People stood up and bent over the edge, their fingers pointed like swimmers going to dive. 'One, two, three,' I shouted, and with that we took the leap.
"We were two years and tunty-six days falling before we raiched the world. On the morning of the next day we began our sarch for a place to live. We thravelled from north to south and from ayst to west. Some grew tired and dhropped off in Spain, some in France, and others agin in different parts of the world. But the most of us thravelled ever and ever till we came to a lovely island that glimmered and laughed and sparkled in the middle of the say.
" 'We'll stop here,' I says; 'we needn't sarch farther, and we needn't go back to Italy or Swizzerland, for of all places on the earth this island is the nearest like heaven; and in it the County Clare and the County Tipperary are the purtiest spots of all.'
So we hollowed out the great mountain Sleive-na-mon for our home, and there we are till this day."
The King stopped a while, and sat houldin' his chin in his hands. "That's the thrue story," he says, sighing pitiful. "We took sides with nobody, we minded our own business, and we got trun out for it," says he.
So intherested was Father Cassidy in the talk of the King that the singing and hammering had died out without his knowing, and he hadn't noticed at all how the darkness had thickened in the valley, and how the stillness had spread over the hillside. But now, whin the chief of the fairies stopped, the good man, half frightened at the silence, jumped to his feet and turned to look for his horse.
Beyond the dull glow of the dying fire a crowd of Little People stood waiting, patient and quiet, houlding Terror, who champed restless at his bit, and bate impatient with his hoof on the hard ground.
As the priest looked toward them, two of the little men wearing leather aprons moved out from the others, leading the baste slow and careful over to where the good man stood beside the rock.
"You've done me a faver this night," says the clargyman, gripping with his bridle-hand the horse's mane, "an' all I have to pay it back with'd only harry you an' make you oncomfortable, so I'll not say the words," he says.
"No faver at all," says the King, "but before an hour there'll be lyin' on your own threshold a faver in the shape of a bit of as fine bacon as ever laughed happy in the middle of biling turnips. We borryed it last night from a magisthrate named Blake, who lives up in the County Wexford," he says.
The clargyman had swung himself into the saddle.
"I'd be loathe to say anything disrayspectful," he says quick, "or to hurt sensitive feelings, but on account of my soul's sake I couldn't ate anything that was come by dishonest," he says.
"Bother and botheration, look at that, now!" says the King. "Every thrade has its drawbacks, but I never rayalized before the hardship of being a parish priest. Can't we manage it some way? Couldn't I put it some place where you might find it, or give it to a friend who'd send it to you?"
"Stop a minute," says Father Cassidy. "Up at Tom Healey's I think there's more hunger than sickness, more nade for petaties than for physic. Now, if you send that same bit of bacon—"
"Oh, ho!" says the King, with a dhry cough, "the Healeys have no sowls to save, the same as parish priests have."
"I'm a poor, wake, miserable sinner," says the priest, hanging his head; "I fall at the first temptation. Don't send it," says he.
"Since you forbid me, I'll send it," says the King, chucklin'. "I'll not be ruled by you. To-morrow the Healeys'll have five tinder-hearted heads of cabbage, makin' love in a pot to the finest bit of bacon in Tipperary—that is, unless you do your juty an' ride back to warn them. Raymember their poor sowls," says he, "an' don't forget your own," he says.
The priest sat unaisy in the saddle. "I'll put all the raysponsibility on Terror," he says. "The baste has no sowl to lose. I'll just drop the reins on his neck; if he turns and goes back to Healey's I'll warn them; if he goes home let it be on his own conscience."
He dhropped the reins, and the dishonest baste started for home imagetly.
But afther a few steps Father Cassidy dhrew up an' turned in the saddle. Not a sowl was in sight; there was only the lonely road and the lonesome hillside; the last glimmer of the fairy-fire was gone, and a curtain of soft blackness had fallen betwixt him an' where the blaze had been.
"I bid you good night, Brian Connors!" the priest cried. From somewhere out of the darkness a woice called back to him, "Good night, your Riverence!"
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The Adventures of King Brian Connors
Chapter I
The King and the Omadhaun *
* Omadhaun, a foolish fellow.
DID your honour ever hear how Anthony Sullivan's goat came to join the fairies?
Well, it's a quare story and a wandhering, quarrelsome story, as a tale about a goat is sure to be. Howsumever, in the home of the Good People—which, as you know, is the hollow heart of the great mountain Sleive-na-mon—Anthony Sullivan's goat lives and prospers to this day, a pet and a hayro among the fairies.
And this is the way it came about:
All the world knows how for months Darby O'Gill an' his purty sister-in-law, Maureen McGibney, were kept presners by the Good People; an' how, afther they were relaysed by the King, that same little fairy, King Brian Connors, used often to visit thim an' sit with thim colloguin' and debaytin' an' considherin' in Darby O'Gill's kitchen.
One lonesome Decimber night, when Bridget and the childher were away visiting Bridget's father at Ballingher, and the angry blast was screaming and dhrifting the first white flakes of winther around Darby's house, thin it was that Darby O'Gill, Brian Connors, the King of the Good People, and Maureen McGibney sat with their heads together before the blazing hearth. The King, being not much higher than your two hands, sat on the child's stool betwixt the other two, his green cloak flung back from his chowlders, and the goold crown on his head glistening in the firelight.
It was a pleasant sight to watch them there in the flickering hearth glow. From time to time, as he talked, the ould King patted Maureen's hands and looked smiling up into her purty gray eyes. They had been discoursing on the subject of Throubles and Thribulations.
"Arrah! You ought to be the happy man, King," Darby says, sipping his noggin of punch, "with no silly woman to ordher you or to cross you or to belittle you. Look at meself. Afther all the rayspect I've climbed into from being with the fairies, and afther all the knowledge I've got from them, there's one person in this parish who has no more riverence for me now than she had the firs
t day she met me—sometimes not so much, I'm thinking," he says, hurt-like.
"I've seen the workings of families during more than five thousand years," says the little King, "so you needn't tell me who that one person is, me poor man—'tis your own wife, Bridget."
"Thrue for you! Whin it's the proud woman she ought to be this day to have the likes of me for a husband," says Darby. "Ah, then, you ought to be the happy man, whatever wind blows," he sighed again; "when you see a fat pig you like, you take it without so much as saying by your lave; if you come upon a fine cow or a good horse, in a twinkling you have it in Sleive-na-mon. A girl has a good song with her, a boy has a nimble foot for a jig, or an ould woman a smooth tongue for a tale, and, whisk! they're gone into the heart of the mountain to sing or dance for you, or to beguile you with ould tales until the Day of Judgment."
The King shook his head slowly, and drew a long face.
"Maybe we ought to be happy," says he. " 'Tis thrue there's no sickness in Sleive-na-mon, nor worry for to-morrow, nor fret for one's childher, nor parting from friends, or things like that, but throuble is like the dhrifting snow outside, Darby; it falls on the cottage and it covers the castle with the same touch, and once in a while it sifts into Sleive-na-mon."
"In the name of goodness!" cries Darby, surprised, "is there anything in the whole world you can't have for the wishing it?"
The King took off his goold crown and began polishing it with his sleeve to hide his narvousness. "I'll tell you a saycret," he whuspered, bending over toward Darby, and speaking slow. "In Sleive-na-mon our hearts are just breaking for something we can't get; but that's one thing we'd give the worruld for."
"Oh, King, what in the livin' worruld can it be?" cried Maureen.
"I'd give the teeth out of me head if I could only own a goat," says the King, looking as though he were going to cry.
"Man alive!" says Darby, dhropping the poker, "the counthry-side is full of goats, and all you have to do is to take your pick and help yourself. You're making game of us, King."
The King shook his head. "The Good People have been thrying for years to capture one," says he. "I've been bunted into ditches by the villains; I've been trun over hedges by them; I had to leap on the back of Anthony Sullivan's goat, and with two hundred of me subjects in full cry behind, ride him all night long, houlding by his horns to kape him from getting at me and disthroying me entirely. The jumps he took with me that night were thraymendous. It was from the cow-shed to the sthraw-stack, from the sthraw-stack to the house-top, and from there down to the ground agin, and then hooraying an' hoorooing, a race up the mountain-side. But," says the King, kind o' sniffling an' turning to the fire, "we love the ground he walks upon," says he.
"Tare an' ouns!" says Darby, "why don't you put your spell on one of them?"
"You don't know them," says the King. "We can't put the black spell on thim—they're not Christian bastes, like pigs or cows. Whin it comes to animals, we can only put our come 'ither on cattle and horses, and such as are Christian animals, ye know. In his mind and in his heart a goat is a pagen. He wouldn't ask any betther divarsion than for me to thry and lay me hands on him," says the King, wiping his eyes.
"But," says he agin, standing up on the stool and houlding his pipe over his head, "Anthony Sullivan's goat is the gallusest baste that roams the fields! There's more fun in him, and no more fear in him, than in a yallow lion. He'd do anything for sport; he'd bunt the King of Russia, he'd ba-a at a parish priest, out of pure, rollicking divilment," says the King. "If the Good People had a friend, a rale friend," says he, looking hard at Darby, "that wouldn't be afeard to go into our home within the mountain once more, just once, and bring with him that goat—"
"Say no more," says Darby, hoarsely, and turning white with fear—"say no more, Brian Connors! Not all the goold in Sleive-na-mon would tempt me there agin! It's make a presner of me for ever you would. I know your thricks."
The look of scorn the little man flung at Darby would have withered the threes.
"I might have known it," he says, sitting down disgusted. "I was a fool for hoping you would," says he. "There's no more spirit in ye nor sinse of gratichude than in a hin. Wait till!—" and he shook his fist.
"Don't blame the lad," cried Maureen, patting the King's head, sootheringly; "sure, why should the like of a wondherful man, such as you, who has lived five thousand years, and knows everything, compare your wit or your spirit or your sinse with the likes of us poor crachures that only stay here a few hours and thin are gone for ever?" This she cried, craftily, flatthering the ould man. "Be aisy on him, King, acushla!" says she, coaxing.
Well, the little man, being soothered, sat down agin. "Maybe I was too hard," he says, "but to tell the truth, the life is just bothered out of me, and my temper is runed these days with an omadhaun we've taken lately; I don't know what to do with him. Talk of throuble! He mopes and mourns and moothers in spite of all we can do. I've even tould him where the crocks of goold are hid—"
"You haven't tould me that," cries Darby, quickly.
"No," says the King, looking at him sideways.
"At laste not yit," says Darby, looking sideways at the King.
"Not yit, nor will I fer a long time yitter, you covetous, ungrateful spalpeen!" snapped the fairy.
"Well," said he, paying no more attention to Darby, "this young omadhaun is six feet high in his stockings, and as foine a looking lad as you'll see in a day's walk. Now what do you think he's mourning and crooning for?"
"Faix, I dunno," answered Darby. "Maybe it's a horse or a dog or a cow, or maybe a pair of pigs."
"You've not hit it," said the Ruler of the Good People; "it's a colleen. And him having a college education, too."
"Troth, thin," said Darby, with a knowledgeable wag of his head, "some of them larned students are as foolish in that way as ignorant people. I once met a tinker named Larry McManus, who knew the jography from cover to cover, and still he had been married three times."
"Poor gossoon! Who is the omadhaun?" asked Maureen, not minding Darby.
"He's no less," said the King, "than Roger O'Brien, a son of ould Bob O'Brien, who was the richest and proudest man in the County Tipperary. Ould Bob thraces his ancestors for five hundhred years, and he owns a mile of land and has forty tenants. He had no child but this omadhaun."
"And who is the colleen? Some grand Princess, I suppose," said Maureen.
"There was the whole throuble," answered the little man. "Why, she's no one at all, but a little white-cheeked, brown-eyed, black-haired girl named Norah Costello, belonging to one of his own tenants on the domain. It all came from eddicatin' people above their station."
"Faix," Darby says, "there's Phelem Brady, the stonecutter, a fine, dacint man he was till he made up his mind to larn the history of Ireland from ind to ind. When he got so far as where the Danes killed Brian Boru he took to dhrink, and the divil a ha'porth's good he's been ever since. But lade on with your discoorse, King," says he, waving his noggin of punch.
At this the King filled his pipe, Maureen threw fresh turf on the fire, and the wind dhrew the sparks dancing up the chimney. Now and thin while the King talked, some of the fairies outside rapped on the window-panes and pressed their little faces against the glass to smile and nod at those within, thin scurried busily off agin intil the darkness. Once the wail of a child rose above the cry of the storm, and Maureen caught the flash of a white robe against the window-pane.
"It's a child we've taken this night from one Jude Casey down in Mayo," says King Brian Connors. "But fill my noggin with fresh punch, Maureen, and dhraw closter till I tell you about the omadhaun." And the Master of the Good People crossed his legs and settled into telling the story, comfortable as comfortable could be.
"The way the throuble began was foine and innocent as the day is long," said the King. "Five or six years ago—it was on the day Roger was first sent to college at Dublin—Misther and Misthress O'Brien, mighty loneso
me an' down-hearted, were dhriving over the estate whin who should they spy standing, modest and timid, at her own gate, but purty little Norah Costello. Though the child was only fourteen years old, Misthress O'Brien was so taken with her wise, gentle ways that Norah next day was sint for to come up to the big house to spind an hour amusing the Misthress. There was the rock they all split on.
Every day afther for a month the little girl went visiting there. At the end of that time Misthress O'Brien grew so fond of her that Norah was brought to the big house to live. Ould Bob liked the little girl monsthrous well, so they put fine clothes on her until in a couple of years one couldn't tell her from a rale lady, whether he met her in the house or at the crossroad.
Only every Saturday night she'd put on a little brown poplin dhress and go to her father's cottage, and stay there helping her mother till Monday or maybe Chewsday. 'For I mustn't get proud-hearted,' she'd say, 'or lose the love I was born to, for who can tell whin I'll need it,' says she.
Darby O'Gill and the Good People Page 7